Category Archives: Bloody teenagers

These days, accidents are a fairly rare occurrence. And, when they aren’t, most of the time it’s a simple case of a little bit of wee on the carpet we’re planning to get rid of eventually, or a pair of pjs shoved in the washing machine a few days earlier than they would have been… Compared to this time last year, we’re out of the woods and frolicking in our dry, big girl knickers. However, sometimes there will come a day with an Accident. Think the park on a semi-busy weekday, toddler weeping in shame, your face radiating the heat of a thousand suns as you desperately try to mop the large puddle off the slide with three wet wipes, your own sleeve and the hopes and dreams of the several small children forming a queue. Frustrating but manageable. Brushed off with a rant. Forgiven with a strong gin. Laughable in approximately two to three days.

And then there are ACCIDENTS.

And that means several things. Firstly, the setting will be as public as public can be. Think supermarket at rush hour, the park on a warm weekend, the preschool playground at drop off time, a coffee shop chain at 10 past 1… Secondly, it will probably involve poo. Or vomit. Possibly a really huge, stinky-like-they’ve-eaten-nothing-but-asparagus-then-fermented-it-for-a-week wee. But most likely poo. And not the solid, manageable kind (if such a thing exists once nappies are a thing of the past). Thirdly, your child will be wearing a particularly nice and complicated-to-wash outfit, like a lacy dress or a suit or, in one memorable case, ballet tutu complete with extortionate ballet tights and even-more-extortionate, properly-fitted ballet shoes.

Turns out, you’re not supposed to put ballet shoes in the washing machine.

Nope, you’re really, really not…

“How do you wash them, then?” I politely enquired of the Dance Ma’am upon buying the inevitable replacement pair.

“Wet wipes,” she replied.

Right. So the next time a ballet ACCIDENT occurs, I am expected to take the not-supposed-to-get-wet items, use an already-wet receptacle to mop up [smear around] the excess fluids, then air them out as best I can while hoping that, for the remainder of the time it takes for my child’s feet to grow another size, none of her tutu-clad chums notice the squelchy noise and the slightly pissy aroma emanating from her twinkling toes? Right.

Then there are the sh!t jeans – a strange, pungent phenomenon that I hope is not exclusive to my own household. Lara owns a pair of jeggings – fairly innocuous-looking, suitable for both park and pre-school, hard-wearing and of a denim shade that, wonderfully, goes with pretty much every top she owns.

To top off their sheer excellence, they’re blimmin’ designer and I did not even have to pay for them as they were inherited from her older cousin. A truly winning item of sartorial achievement, no? No. For some unknown reason, nine times out of ten, when an accident, Accident or, indeed, even ACCIDENT occurs, she will be wearing these jeans. They get more rounds in the washing machine than any other item of clothing any of us owns, or have ever owned.

Why do I continue to dress her in them? Well, partly because they’re so damn convenient (and before you judge me, you try pairing a fluorescent, multi-coloured, polka-bespotted cardy with a suitable item of leg-wear). But also because they are the only item of Ted Baker apparel in the entire household and therefore must be worn in an irrational, get-your-money’s-worth vein of logic (made all the more irrational, of course, by the fact that I did not even buy them). Every time I dress her in them, I think: “Surely not. She’s just been to the toilet. This time, we’ll be fine.”

Then, invariably, we find ourselves on the park swing, urine dripping, no spare pants to be had, not a shred of a wet wipe to our names.

Some tricks I’ve learned along the way:

Always pack spare pants. Even if your child has literally just done a poo bigger than his head and peed for Britain before leaving the house, bring spare pants.

Pack spare spare pants. And spare everything else. Even socks. Especially socks. Otherwise you will end up having to either give up your own socks or try and make a temporary pair out of toilet roll and napkins because even if it’s July and she’ll become allergic to them as soon as she steps through the front door, your toddler definitely, definitely needs sockies now, Mummy.

Wet wipes leak. I don’t know how, I don’t know why, but that is the only explanation I can give to my entire spare cache of clothes ending up wadded up into a sad, cursed little ball of saturated hopes and dreams in the bottom of my mummy bag. Best thing to do is wrap the spare clothes in a plastic bag. An extra plastic bag is NEVER A BAD THING to have. Or don’t pack wet wipes. You know, if you’re that sort of dance-with-the-devil, pee-into-the-wind type of serial lunatic.

Always pack wet wipes. Because who, seriously, chooses to pee into the wind?

Even if your child has been toilet trained for three years, widdles on demand to the theme-tune of Peppa Pig and has been wiping her own arse since birth – never forget ANY of the above. Ever. Only at the stage where your mummy bag has long been relegated to the back of the cupboard and the word ‘accident’ is more likely to invoke images of broken condoms and impending grandparent-hood than pungent puddles can you probably rest assured that they are at least responsible for their own spare drawers. Until then, the day you take your child’s continence for granted is the day you end up in a Sainsbury’s toilet with despair in your heart and a plastic bag wrapped around your child’s bottom.

Take it from me. Or, better yet, take it from the sh!t jeans.

Little did they suspect the giant, rogue wave about to make a crashing appearance…

Nothing will hammer home the approach of a new decade of age quite so adeptly as a teenage girl. It’s Sunday, December 11th, I’ve acquired enough shopping to elongate my arms at least another two inches (which I am to feel mainly in my neck and shoulders for the next week) and I’m standing in the queue at Primark in the centre of Reading. In front of me tower two smooth haired, leggings-clad teenage girls of an indefinable, wilderness-angst age. One of them notices one of the impulse buys lining the queue walkway, a handbag organiser that I may or may not have been surreptitiously admiring. She snorts and says, “Oh for god’s sake, what a Grandma thing to buy!”

And there it is. Mortality.

It’s been a suspicion of mine for some time that I’m no longer quite ‘down with the kids’, possibly because I still think of it as ‘down with the kids.’ This suspicion was confirmed when I felt the need to write myself a ‘to do’ list on Monday and then happened to glance a rather jaded eye down it.

I have, mostly, done all these now… except the bloody car tax

That’s right, my memory has reached the stage of degradation whereby I need to have ‘de-flea bedroom’ written down in order for me to actually remember to do it. You’d think being bitten alive on a nightly basis would be reminder enough. You really would.

But, you know, there are benefits to getting older. I wouldn’t want to go back. I certainly wouldn’t want to go back 15 years. Every year brings new experiences. I had a baby, I got married, I wrote two books, bought, sold and bought another house, got promoted to editor of a magazine. I’ve done a lot for 30. And every week brings more new experiences. For example, this week I learned that the secret to de-fleaing one’s house requires a great deal of pure, unedited, incanfuckingdescent rage.

I’ve learned new words. I’ve learned to feel other words. Love. Grief. Joy. Pride. Labour. Words that, at 15, only spun and drifted from the tips of my fingertips, just as they should.

And, sometimes, things don’t feel all that different at all. Standing there in Primark, with presents for my loved ones digging grooves into my fingers, the queue shuffles forwards as the two girls began to discuss a party. “I don’t want to go to Alex’s ugly party,” one exclaims in a fit of pique. “I don’t even like him, he’s a ginge!” Ah. That old chestnut. I’ve certainly changed since I was 15* – I wouldn’t dream of allowing some bigoted, overgrown child’s comments to embarrass me these days – but perhaps the world of 15-year-olds hasn’t, that much. That bothers me. But it doesn’t surprise me.

Maybe that’s the saddest thing about getting older. When the surprises begin to fade into cynicism and innocence becomes a hard-eyed search for faults and cracks. It’s hard to be an optimist now. But not impossible… There’s so much still to look forward to – all the things I haven’t done yet. House renovations. Wedding anniversaries. More books to write and, hopefully – one day – publish. Family holidays. More babies, and guiding them through their own wilderness-angst years. Perhaps these are the sad, past-it ambitions of a handbag-organiser-admirer. I’ll take them any day. Cynicism hasn’t totally consumed me yet. After all, I’m only 30.

*Perhaps my new year’s resolution – or new decade’s resolution, if you will – should be to drop the whole “that’s the same as racism” response I came up with at 15 and launch into song instead…